First Demonic Dragon-Chapter 929: Everything Hurts

Abaddon had noticed the human with the pierced nose standing outside of his room for some time now.

He just decided not to do anything about it because he sensed the person had no intention of coming in or disturbing him.

"Something we can do for you?"

The young man Clay had referred to as Isaac was leaning against the wall with his arms folded—hardly the pinnacle of what the gods would call respectful posture.

"Gramps said I'm supposed to attend to you. Help you get where you need to go, get your hands on whatever you need. That kinda thing."

Abaddon would have laughed at the notion if he couldn't tell the young man was deadly serious.

"You'll find I'm rarely in need of an attendant." Abaddon admitted.

'Yeah, and I'm rarely in the mood to play servant, but it looks like we'll both be doing useless shit today.' Isaac thought.

He was completely unaware that Bekka and Abaddon could hear his thoughts like they were spoken out loud.

"You should say things like that with your chest."

Watching all of the color leave Isaac's face was just the additive Abaddon needed to be amused rather than angry.

"Are you going somewhere?"

Kanami opened her door down the hall and poked her head outside, eager as a puppy for a car ride.

"Cemetery!" Bekka answered a tad too cheerfully.

"Someone's excited to do some digging." Kanami realized.

Abaddon stared at Bekka hard, like he was waiting for her to have an outburst. No such thing occurred.

"You coming?" Bekka asked with a smile.

"Are you kidding? You'll have a hard time stopping me, dollface." Kanami grinned back.

The two girls locked arms and skipped down the hallway like the best of friends.

Abaddon remained stuck behind, slack-jawed and with a feeling of deep unfairness in his heart.

-

A cool grey sky had overtaken the world during the amount of time the group had been inside.

It took very little work for Abaddon to find the nearest cemetery where a member of the Wanderers had been buried.

Abaddon, Kanami, and Isaac were on standby as Bekka reverted into her natural form and commenced a round of good-natured digging.

Kanami watched her and prepared to make a comment to her brother when she realized that he was not at her side anymore.

She found him a couple of rows behind her, kneeling in front of a group of ghosts who seemed like they were in dire need of absolution.

There weren't any children among this bunch. Mostly just older people who had gone at the appropriate time, and some younger people who died due to some cruel twists of fate.

Azrael, Thanatos, Lillian, and other death gods show up to take recently deceased souls to the afterlife all the time.

However, sometimes the spirits just have too much still tethering them to the world. They either cannot or will not leave.

It is the responsibility of Death's aspects to remind them of the consequences of staying on earth for too long, but past that point, there is very little that they can do.

Bringing in an unwilling soul to heaven or any of the peaceful afterlives stokes discord and resentment in their spirits and generally makes the whole 'paradise' thing far harder to achieve.

The unrest and chaos spreads from just one soul to the others like a viral infection. Not entirely dissimilar from how chaos itself operates.

Kanami didn't know what her brother was trying to do, but she just figured that he was on one of his altruistic streaks again.

"What is he doing exactly..?"

Kanami glanced over her shoulder at Isaac. He also seemed to have been watching him for a long time.

But judging by the concerned look on his face, he was probably thinking that her brother was just standing around talking to himself.

"You don't have the sight?" Kanami raised a brow.

Isaac's brow furrowed as he looked away.

Kanami let out a low whistle. "Oh, I see... A nonbeliever then? Someone must not be popular with the rest of the clan." freewebnøvel.com

Isaac scoffed as he gestured to himself. "I look like someone who's been popular with them at any point in my life?"

"Well, no, but I didn't want to just assume anything." Kanami shrugged.

Isaac didn't know if she was trying to be funny or not, but whatever it was wasn't working.

The red wanderers are particularly unique existences.

From the moment they are born, they all have red hair and a particularly unique birthmark somewhere on their body.

Their affinity for the supernatural isn't something that kicks in until later in their lives.

They enter into something of a closed practice similar to hoodoo.

Their parents or elders teach them little by little about their faith in Abaddon, and as they become more sure in their belief, their markings spread across their bodies and they become something of an anomaly.

Not quite supernatural, instead, they are humans who possess the distinct ability to materialize items from the power of their faith and can notice supernatural presences.

However, if they are ever to lose their faith or begin exhibiting conduct that goes against their values, they lose their powers instantly. Those abilities don't come back unless the chieftain restores them himself.

Isaac had always been different. He thought that his family and the people they called cousins were being indoctrinated into some kind of prolific doomsday cult.

Members aren't allowed to coerce others into believing through acts of force, intimidation, or even revelation of their powers, so there was no way to change his mind.

Until one turns seventeen, they don't even learn about the supernatural world or the fact that their bloodline is able to manifest items. So when Isaac stopped attending worship, the knowledge was barred from him.

Isaac continued putting a wedge between his family, with no idea of what he was walking away from. That is, until he was held at gunpoint around two years ago, and he watched his brother pull a sword and an axe out of his back.

But by that point... it was far too late. Isaac had burned a lot of bridges with the clan, and they weren't exactly super forgiving. Other than his grandfather, no one really seemed to want him around.

After Kanami explained the gist of what her brother was doing, Isaac seemed to have more questions than answers.

He stared at Abaddon's back for a long time, and once again his thoughts weren't stuffed down deeply enough to be quiet.

'If he's so great, why'd he just abandon us..?'

Kanami saw her brother flinch.

Her aura briefly flashed, and she whirled around to lift Isaac up by the neck. "You little fuck... You have no idea the kind of-"

"I'm done!"

Bekka poked her head out above ground with an adorably large smile on her muzzle and the faintest bit of dust in her hair.

Abaddon walked over, wearing a small smirk. "You're aware you could've done this in less than a second with your powers, right?"

Bekka slowly reverted back to her human disguise and frowned. "Just be a good husband and say you're proud of me."

"I'm proud of you, darlin'."

"Aww, thank you, my husband." Bekka gushed.

Abaddon wondered how he had never realized just how attractive Bekka was when she was covered in dirt.

Shaking his head to free himself from complex thoughts, he hopped into the hole Bekka had dug.

A coffin had been pulled to the surface. Still gleaming and new, as if even the dirt couldn't stand to touch it.

Abaddon glanced over his shoulder.

Isaac was choosing not to look in their direction. Probably the best thing for everyone.

Abaddon kneeled down and pulled open the coffin lid.

He didn't crinkle his nose at the smell or turn his gaze away from the unsettling sight of a man nearly beaten beyond recognition.

For a moment, Abaddon's mind went blank. He wasn't even aware of where he was anymore.

He had seen every kind of death under the sun nd stars, from species across the galaxy and the multiverse alike.

This wasn't his first time seeing wounds like this at all. And now that he was able to sense them, he was positive that they came from a demon. A pack of them as a fact.

But Abaddon couldn't focus on that right now. His mind felt like it was fighting itself.

'I left them.'

'They needed me.'

'I just watched them suffer.'

'How selfish can I be?'

'It's Yesh's fault.'

'I shouldn't have listened to him.'

'That old bastard.'

'He did this on purpose.'

'And now he's not even around for me to hate-'

"Babe, are you doing that??"

Bekka's voice was like the light to cut through the darkness.

When Abaddon's mind cleared and his vision returned to him, he was greeted with a horrifying scene.

The corpse inside of the coffin was moving.

And not just moving. It was groaning in a low, raspy voice. As if echoes of pain still rippled throughout his undead form.

"It hurts... It hurts...!"

Isaac had been staring into the parking lot in the distance. But as soon as he heard that familiar voice, his neck snapped towards the coffin.

"Nate?? Nate!!"

Isaac attempted to jump into the dirt pit with his brother, but Kanami caught him by the scruff of his neck and held him back.

The corpse gradually sat up, and Bekka could immediately tell that her husband wasn't piloting it.

"Y-You... It's all your fault..!"

Undead Nathan lashed out and wrapped what remained of his hands around Abaddon's neck.

"This is the reward for believing in you, do you see?? You did this to me!!"